


Violets Are Red, Roses Are Blue

by DetroitBabe



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst, Gen, Vignette, also there's one gross scene with blood just a heads up, i guess, nothing really extreme, there's just enough garmonbozia in these people's lives to feed a medium-sized lodge demon family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-18 03:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11283138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetroitBabe/pseuds/DetroitBabe
Summary: "[...]it's a list of agents who've suffered terrible fates - - TP"A series of little vignettes from the lives of the Blue Rose family.





	Violets Are Red, Roses Are Blue

**Author's Note:**

> From the author of the critically acclaimed only Carl Rodd fic on the internet, now comes a bag of FBI Family Feels allsorts. As usual, baby doesn't do plot, and chronology is a lie made up by the government. (Speaking of, the time points were originally there for my own benefit, but I decided to keep them, because descriptions such as "????? Earlier" give off that genuine Peaks vibe).  
> Also, I am perpetually intimidated by the quality of meta in this fandom, and would like to apologize in advance for possible contradictions with canon, fanon and whatnot. There are fandoms in which I am a God of trivia, but here I'm just a humble blob.

i. Lil. 1990s

It was funny, really, when you think about it; not funny as in a funny joke, but funny as in life is a joke. The joke was that she was just a secretary, with security clearance never high enough for even a vague idea of what was really going on; and yet she was the one chosen by Cole to perform the surreal debriefings he’s come up with. She supposed it was all part of the secrecy obsession that hung almost perceptible in the air around here – but then, if he cared so much about keeping his agents’ assignments under wraps, why did he never just debrief them himself? The mental image of the Regional Bureau Chief himself prancing around in an ill-fitting dress and making faces never failed to make her feel a bit better.

It’s not like her job was so bad, to be honest. Day-to-day, it was regular, a little boring even, but steady. But from time to time, it was incomprehensibly bizarre, and there was just something incredibly frustrating in those meaningless (or rather, having a meaning beyond her reach) gestures. She was used to not knowing, of course, to acting on instructions without understanding, to handling papers in sealed folders and filing messages replaced by stripes of black ink. (She would sometimes say, in half-seriousness, that this is what should hang in the office instead of the traditional stars and stripes – a flag-sized printout of the illegibly crossed-out words not for your eyes. Would be more accurate.) But the occasional clown act would suddenly make it infuriating. Like a joke she was destined to never get the point of. Red dress, yellow dress, and the blue rose didn’t really match any of them, the blue rose was always bad.

She didn’t get to wear the blue rose too often, but it was still _too often_. The first time she did, she wore the yellow dress, the one with the plunging neckline, and for a moment she thought that the young agent has been staring at her cleavage, but he seemed slightly startled, and since there was nothing fearsome about Lil’s tits, she assumed it was the rose. She returned to her desk uneasy, and later, even though she knew she shouldn’t, she tried asking around, for some reason desperate to know what it meant. Diane knew something, Lil could tell, but she didn’t say anything, just gave her the look. Diane, the object of envy, knew things, and the documents passing through her hands had a little more words and a little less of black lines. The small, nearly imperceptible shake of the head she gave was the best Lil could get, and it was enough. Perhaps it was silly, superstitious nonsense, but Lil felt – knew – believed with unwavering certainty: the blue rose was a bad sign. When they served creamed corn in the Bureau canteen, it was a bad sign. When the lights flickered in the corridor, simultaneously, but just for a moment – it was a bad sign. There were a fat lot of bad signs, and the answer was under the black lines, and someone out there was sure as hell having a laugh.

 

ii. Diane. 1990

Red is for love, blue is for mysterious and evil; purple is between the two, both and neither, and so it’s the most apt. And a touch of peach to brighten it up – yes, that’s perfect. Diane ran a hand over the bouquet, her slender fingers brushing the petals, and sat on the edge of the desk. The roses were her, all over – not quite red (her attachment not absolute), not quite blue (she’s not really one of them, is she?), and a pale little head above the darkness, almost drowned, but still holding.

Dale – agent Cooper, she corrected her thoughts (seeking some respite in distancing herself), would like them. But agent Cooper wasn’t here.

It hasn’t been that long, but it’s been long enough for most of them to accept – no, _begin getting used to_ the fact that he might not be coming back, not soon, perhaps not ever. And it sure hasn’t been easy on anyone, but some took it harder. Had she been selfish or blind or stupid, she’d say it was the worst for her, but there was Albert, too. (Gordon was hard to crack: he sometimes seemed to care deeply, in his own way; but then, you never knew what was going on inside this man’s head unless he shouted it in your ear.) She felt like she _knew_ Cooper better than anyone, but knowing him so well, she knew no one was closer to him than Albert. She sometimes envied them the intimacy of their friendship, even though her own relationship with Cooper exceeded the professional necessities, too. But her yearning was a force of gravity, a natural law: that boy simply pulled the people around him into his orbit; even when he himself sometimes seemed remote, the cold hard skin was thin. There was a fire kindling inside him, waiting to burn, but now he was gone, a flash in the pan – the faint glint of a cigarette tip reflected in Diane’s eyes, and mirrored her thoughts. There was so much love in him, just waiting to be given; with him gone, the night was moonless, like the smog-drawn sky outside the window of her Philly office. Oh, fuck it, she was getting so maudlin. Thinking like that, listening to Dale’s – Cooper’s tapes over and over. She always liked some background noise while she worked, usually listening to the radio, and sometimes to Cooper’s tapes, finding his orderly enthusiasm actually helpful. Now it disturbed her, but she couldn’t stop, couldn’t bring herself to sever that one last connection, the same way as in some act of final denial one cannot bring themselves to scratch a dead friend’s phone number out of the address book. Oh, great, now she was thinking him dead… He probably was, though, buried in a ditch somewhere – it happened, right? She stubbed out the cigarette and returned to her desk, the question she’s been mulling over still unanswered, her fingers lingering over the typewriter’s keyboard – transfer or resignation?

 

iii. Dale. ?????

Thirteen paces to walk the corridor from end to end. (In numerology, 13 means upheaval, and great power to be used for good or ill, so often the latter). Twenty-six there and back. (26 is karma, cause and effect; as you reap, so shall you sow – the universal truth of consequence). There is a statue on one end, sometimes; sometimes there isn’t. Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click, the clicking of heels on the panelled floor.  It’s still the same corridor. It’s never quite the same. Behind the heavy red curtains there are four doors. They are always in the same places, but they don’t always lead to the same room. Perhaps they never lead to the same room. The number of rooms is undetermined. And they always stay the same, and they always change, the way back leads forwards and the empty room is never empty. It is hard to navigate. It’s almost all he has left to do, after – after – ever since –

The other one’s face is subtly wrong. Maybe it’s wrong the same way your own face always looks off on a photograph, because you are used to seeing the mirror image, not your real face as others see it; maybe it’s really wrong. Like the wolf’s in Little Red Riding Hood, eyes so big so that he can see you (eyes washed out and blank but follow you everywhere), teeth so sharp so that he can eat you (mouth open wide in laughter like scream and white noise). The instinct to run is primal, and there is no fighting it, no overcoming it. Self-preservation. Imperfect courage. What happens when he catches you is a hazy memory, a moment frozen on a blurred, overexposed film. It hurts, and not much else.

The body doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, doesn’t feel. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s a ghost standing by his own side, forever haunting the empty shell of the old him. Perhaps the body doesn’t exist, perhaps it is only a reflection, a shadow, an echo, an afterimage. Perspective shifts constantly, like in a dream: out of body, looking down – in the body, looking out its eyes like dirty windows, dimmed, crystallized, immobile, hard and fragile. Movement is sometimes an effort, sometimes an impossibility, sometimes an occurrence outside of his control. A lucid dream. Is that what this is? The body is quiet, like a corpse. The body is still, but it ages, its slow changing the only measure of the passage of time. It’s a perpetual night with the dawn always out of reach, and there isn’t even a heartbeat to tick off the seconds, it takes years showing on the body’s face to come to the horrifying realization of how long it has been.

At first, he thought that the old legend, as Hawk has told it, was wrong; but then he came to realize that only his interpretation was a misunderstanding. This place would eventually destroy his very soul, just not in the short flash of all-devouring fire that he has imagined and feared; instead, there was this gradual decay, this slow slipping into a shell-shocked near oblivion, atom by atom, second after second, minute after minute, hour upon hour, day upon day, how many years until there’s nothing left?

 

iv. Chet. 1989

What went wrong – when and where did he take the wrong turn? Which breath was taken at the wrong second, which movement caused him to slip through the cracks in reality? Is this even what happened? His memory was a little foggy, a little frayed on the edges, the deciding moment of passing lost beyond his reach. A sensation of falling, and the blinding flash of light, and a million conspiracy theories passing through his head. Afterimages, circles and triangles swirling under his eyelids, noise like the crackling and hissing of electricity, like a lightbulb about to explode, maybe that was the light shining in his eyes, about to burst into a spray of broken glass and sparks and sudden darkness – he held his breath in apprehension, for as long as he could, he felt suspended and he felt like going faster and faster, but the light didn’t go off – he blacked out first.

Red at the edges of his vision, blood pounding in his head. In the corner of his eye, figures moved, larger than life, massive in size and meaning. He tried to see clear, tried to understand, to collect his scattered thoughts. Someone was talking to him, in a strange, slurred voice that somehow reached his subconscious before he could make proper sense of it, and he felt even more like a marionette – not even that, a stage prop in someone’s hands, as with surprise he found himself walking across the insubstantial floor, directionless void, same above as below, reaching out to draw aside the heavy red velvet curtains that suddenly appeared before him, they didn’t even materialize, they just suddenly _were_ there and they haven’t been there a blinking of an eye ago and they’ve always been there, it’s like a dream, it is a dream, they tell you it’s not but don’t listen to them. That’s not what Gordon has told him, but what does he know?

What does he know?

What does _he_ know?

“Blue Rose,” said a voice at the back of his head, in front of him; the man speaking appeared with a second’s delay, like a frame of a movie with the sound and picture out of sync. Chet felt his left arm rise, without his control, and saw a ring – Teresa’s ring – on his finger, and suddenly in the man’s outstretched palm.

He doesn’t understand, but he knows. And when the ground opens beneath his feet (its solidness only a concept anyway) and he hears that rasped laughter like the barking of a mechanical dog, he is not surprised.

He had laughed when, years back, Gordon has explained him what the blue rose meant. He wasn’t laughing now, blue the colour of the non-existence reaching out to claim him –

 

v. Sam. 1989 –

He should have asked.

Well, he _did_ ask, more than once, and never got a proper answer. He should have pressed on, then, make them tell him, he should have… He knows this guilt is irrational, although understandable, but knowing that doesn’t help, and that’s really the worst part, like being betrayed by your own brain, when you dissect an emotion but that doesn’t kill it. A merry-go-round of what-ifs kept spinning in his mind. He should have this, he should have that. He should have… He should have stayed in the Bureau, definitely; work hard, keep climbing that career ladder until he was high enough for someone to finally tell him what was really going on – yeah, he should’ve done all that.

A colleague going missing presumed dead is something that occasionally happens. That’s what you’re told, and it stands to reason; the job has its inherent risks, and even if you don’t think about it day-to-day, even if you don’t really expect it, it’s somewhere at the back of your mind: you might lose your partner. But they weren’t partners, and they weren’t friends, they’ve only just met and they didn’t even work through a whole one case. So why was it so hard? Well, he knew why: because he didn’t know a damn thing. It wasn’t just your regular lack of closure; he was an investigator, that was his job and his job was the most of his life, and unanswered questions simply didn’t sit well with him – felt too much like a failure.

Cole was so hard to read, too. He seemed so concerned, caring even, sympathetic, and at the same time there was a certain coldness to him, as if he’s always known this was going to happen, as if this was all calculated and directed. Sam couldn’t tell at which point he has become so intensely suspicious of him, enough to risk peeking into things he shouldn’t see. He drank a bit, true, but he was fully aware of what he was doing; there were no redeeming circumstances when he was caught red-handed by the man himself, who, despite his hearing problem and an apparent tendency to dissociate from reality a little bit, seemed to always know exactly what was going on in the office. So Gordon put an arm around Sam in a fatherly gesture of “this is all for your own good”, explained patiently that Sam has suffered a breakdown, had a bit too much to drink, and he (Gordon) would never mention any breach of security, but Sam should better take a long vacation; and he was so convincing that Sam believed it all, complied, and left Philadelphia and the FBI for good.

The irony was, though on the right track, he didn’t actually find out anything. He still didn’t know, not ever.

 

vi. Phillip. 1987/?????/1989

The elevator was suddenly full of noise. He looked around, trying to determine the source, but it was coming from all around him. Or maybe it was coming from him, since everything else looked the same. No, it was something different, as if… as if, instantly and unexpectedly, he’s been made acutely aware of every little sound. The droning of machinery, the buzzing of lights, little hums and clicks magnified to an electrical thunderstorm, vibrating through his body and ringing in his ears, and as abruptly as it started it was cut mute. The lights went out, and he could hear nothing as he stood trembling in the elevator, reclining comfortably in a soft plush armchair, nodding his head to the first notes of a deep, heart-wrenching tune. The lift door opened, the red curtains parting to reveal the singer stepping into the spotlight – his old contact Judy, a beautiful stranger resplendent in her long, sequinned dress. Phillip sipped from the glass resting in his empty, shaking hands, listening to the music in the lobby elevator of a hotel in Buenos Aires, in the smoky nightclub in –

And with the first words of the song hanging in the air, he was finally fully there, body and soul, and it wasn’t Buenos Aires anymore. This knowledge came upon him suddenly, and deep down the primal instinct to run kicked in, but he felt compelled to sit through the song, he found himself unable to move further than leaning in to get a better look at the stage, and so he stayed, spellbound, until the music ended and the lights went out, and on again, and out and on and out in frenzied stroboscope flashing. He grabbed the armrest to haul himself up, but his hands grasped at nothing and he fell back into the simple chair in the corner of a small dingy room above a convenience store. He knew where it was, just as before he knew that the club wasn’t in any city in Argentina or even on this world; the way you just know certain things in dreams – was it a dream? A face filled his vision, white mask, yellow teeth, black mouth, and a mocking screech. He felt heat on his skin and a shudder running down his spine, like standing too close to a fire on a cold night, and to the sound of static, once again filling his ears and his brain at an intolerable volume, he burst into flames.

 

The elevator was suddenly quiet. It stopped on a floor, yes, but it was more than that – the silence was eerily absolute, devoid even of the ever-present, taken for granted background hum of the world. There was buzzing and ringing, but it was only in his ears, only in his head. Only in his head. The light flickered, the world flickered one last time and the lift doors opened onto a corridor. It was momentarily unfamiliar, after the eternity of unmeasured time, after the places and non-places, after the nauseating, mangled quasi-existence it was almost alien, but eventually recognizable: the seventh floor of the old Philly office. He would drop on his knees and kiss that dusty blue carpet, if only he could know for sure it was really the place. Daring to hope so, he strode purposefully towards Gordon’s office, remembering how and where to walk only with the last shreds of muscle memory. He had to talk to Gordon. Had to talk to Gordon. Had to tell him about Judy and… No. That wasn’t important. What was important was the Formica ring. No… the fire. No, something else… He struggled to pluck his thoughts out of the white noise of a dizzying headache and discordant recollections.

“Well now, I'm not gonna talk about Judy,” he began, stumbling into the room. “In fact, we're not gonna talk about Judy at all, we're gonna keep her out of it.” His gaze followed unfocused from Gordon to Albert to the other man – he paused. The man looked younger, neater, innocently startled, but the face was unmistakable. If this was the real world but he was here... Phillip peered at Gordon from across the office, pointing a finger at the familiar stranger.

“Who do you think this is there?”

 

vii. Albert. Earlier

Corpses don’t really bleed. That’s not even expert knowledge, everybody knows that, and a fresh-out-of-the-academy forensic pathologist sure as hell knows that. Blood congeals and settles in the tissues pretty quick, and with no heartbeat to pump it around the body, you would expect a small, sluggish trickle at most. Not this. Certainly not this.

The first drops blooming out of the incision were a slight surprise, but Albert barely missed a beat as he commented his progress to a tape recorder sitting on the bench, between the neatly laid out tools. All good. He didn’t even feel the strange pressure building up beneath his fingers, the slight vibration running along the scalpel, his brain dismissing it straight away, filed under “I” (“I” for “Illusion”, “I” for “Impossible”, the build-up of gas might seem similar but it’s not bloated yet, you’re nervous, steady your hand), denied, over and done – to the point where it took him way too long to back away when the Y-shaped cut opened up and blood came gushing out like from a B-movie prop. And he, legendary amongst his fellow students, interns and workmates, iron-stomached and immovable Rosenfield felt his insides twisting and bile rising in his throat and panic turning his brain to useless mush. The first of the scattered thoughts he managed to catch was, of course, that there has been some horrible mistake and the woman on the table was alive and he was killing her, and he knew with absolute certainty that wasn’t true, but still he frantically grasped and pressed and pulled on the parting flesh, half-blindly, peering through the plastic goggles spattered with red. The next thought, yet more preposterous and horrifying, was that it would never stop.

It stopped after about three minutes, feeling like an eternity and not much less improbable, the volume of liquid now sloshing around Albert’s toes several times exceeding the capacity of one smallish human body. He stood there for at least that long, then, gaping, heaving, his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, louder than the sound of the cassette tape still rolling in the forgotten recorder. He licked his lips and tasted blood, and blood dripped from the tip of his nose and blood clouded his vision; without thinking, he tried to wipe his face with the sleeve of his lab coat, but it was drenched in blood too, and he faltered, grabbing the edge of the table for support. _What the holy jolly fuck was that_. Right. He took off the blood-soaked lab coat and threw it straight into the biohazard waste bin, and went to the bathroom, stumbling and praying he wouldn’t bump into anyone, but fortunately it was late, and the place was mostly deserted. He scrubbed up as best as he could, first himself, then, returning to the morgue, around the slab, feeling like a murderer cleaning up the crime scene. (Interesting fact: blood evidence is often most likely to be found on the ceiling, because every criminal remembers to wash off the blood, but they almost always forget to look up.) Albert looked up and felt a headache hit him between the ears, and just gave up. He put on fresh coat and gloves and approached the body apprehensively, with an irrational (was it now?) fear of it playing up again, even though now it was beyond doubt dead. He surprised himself a little by continuing his work as normal, after his hands stopped shaking so much. Then his mind reeled again, when another impossibility followed, like when you wake up from a nightmare only to discover you’re still dreaming.

The body was empty. It was intact when he began, no one has been here but him to scurry off with all the innards, and yet they were gone; and that’s what he eventually wrote in the report, knowing well he’ll be ridiculed and reprimanded, but partially his integrity, and partially this sort of blankness that has enveloped his mind prevented him from lying. And thus, he contributed his part to the popular stereotype about all pathologists being at least a bit wacky, and he _was_ ridiculed and reprimanded, the whole incident still looming over his future career when the word came from on high that he was to be transferred. He didn’t expect it to be a promotion (damned if he didn’t deserve one, though), but neither it seemed a punishment, since his new superior was so adamant about Albert working for him (Albert could hear the entire conversation through the walls; it was flattering, even if a little migraine-inducing).

There was a small bouquet of roses on his new desk, and a handwritten welcome note from someone called Diane. Albert wasn’t big on flowers, and the electric blue plastic clashed horribly with the decidedly not modernist interior, but, as he reflected on an afterthought, seemed to go quite well with his pale lilac shirt.

 

viii. Tamara. _Circa_ 2013

She has met Denise Bryson once before, shortly after coming to Philadelphia, but the first time they had something resembling a conversation was a little later, in an elevator.

“Just between us,” Denise said after the standard exchange of pleasantries, lowering her voice to a theatrical whisper, “a little word of advice: watch out for the FBI men.”

Tammy raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t that new at her job, but she was new here, at this office, and sometimes got treated like the greenest newbie, but this was one vague piece of advice. She could handle someone making a pass at her, thank you very much, if that’s what Denise had meant…

“Anyone in particular that you have in mind?” she asked wryly. “I work with – and for – FBI men. I am surrounded by FBI men on all sides. I can’t exactly keep my eye on every single one of them.”

Denise nodded, a glint in her eye, but her face grave. “Exactly,” she said, and pursed her lips. “Well,” she added after a brief pause, “if anything, remember this, sweetheart: don’t let them pin a blue rose to your lapel before you’ve read the terms and conditions.”

With that, she left, leaving the perplexed Tammy to ponder on her words. The perplexed Tammy had no idea what Bryson had meant, and she soon almost forgot the encounter, caught up in other conversations and going-ons. But it came back to her later, with the piercing cold blue of Gordon’s eyes on her (watch out for the FBI man, did she say?), with the blue light of her computer screen, when she stayed late in her office again, blue – what was that? Blue rose. She typed the words into the search box – a folder came up, locked, classified above her clearance level. _Read the terms and conditions_. How? Tammy bit her lip. She could snoop around whatever she had access to, but was digging into your employer’s files a wise thing to do? But she had the right to know what she was getting herself into, didn’t she? Oops, she was getting paranoid. After all, in her line of work, secrets were a completely natural and not necessarily sinister thing, and the streak of cold on the back of her neck was only a draft. She cupped her hands around her coffee pot-sized coffee mug, sucking in the warmth, and thinking how to bring up the subject next time she speaks to the Deputy Director. Which will be no later than in two days, when she’s due to report her findings so far on that bizarre murder in Seattle, which she was supposed to work on now, so she better got it together. She opened the case file – and there it was, on the top of the front page, the string of digits and letters that she hasn’t paid too much attention to before (she wasn’t a secretary or an archivist, the information she was looking for wasn’t in the file reference numbers), but now it caught her eye because she’s just seen it, she’s just been staring at it for a good couple of minutes. She double-checked, but there was no mistake – the code corresponded to the name of the encrypted folder. _Don’t let them pin a blue rose to your lapel_. It seemed like they just did, and she didn’t even realize. Well, at least that will give her an excuse to ask Gordon about it, she thought with a half-smile. She was getting good at their game, wasn’t she?

 

ix. Gordon. 1988

You see, it’s like in the movies, where the local sheriff and the federal agent are always at each other’s throats, where one branch of the army would keep stuff from the other one – it’s just like that. There was an ancient enmity between the CIA, the FBI, the USAF, the police and the army, the whole lot of them, cabals on government payroll, closely guarding their secrets, and no common goal could ever unite them; even working on a one and the same case would have them cooperate reluctantly, and constantly get in each other’s way, spitefully, stubbornly. An exchange of information above the bare need-to-know minimum was unthinkable. And yet, there they were, the two men shaking each other’s hands; blue, blue, top-secret camaraderie. It wasn’t the first time, too, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“COLONEL!” Gordon’s squeaky yell reverberated along the office corridors. Next door, in the service of national security, Diane turned up the volume on her radio. Not loud enough to drown out the voices completely, just to be heard, as it was more of a signal for everyone to clear off. Both men liked that, the additional layer of secrecy probably nicely stroking their egos, even though not strictly necessary – the really important stuff was passed on in writing and signs; of Gordon’s shouting, no one would make head nor tail anyway, were they there to hear it. Why should she bother getting up, then?

“OF COURSE, WE’RE IN PHILLY! WHY WOULD YOU ASK THAT?!” In her room, Diane frowned.

“OH, PHILLIP! NO, HE’S NOT HERE!” She took in a sharp breath and turned up the volume on her radio a little higher up. Maybe she should go get herself a coffee after all.

“I’M AFRAID SO!” Unlike the Lieutenant Colonel, Gordon was still audible enough to distinguish the words; she was getting half of the conversation quite clear, whether she wanted it or not.

“I’M VERY SAD, MY FRIEND, BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO?” Cigarette break. Yes, she needed one. She couldn’t focus with the noise anyway. Gordon’s voice caught up with her down the hallway.

“SO, HOW’S THE MOON LOOKING BACK HOME, DOUGIE?” Diane shook her head and walked on. She didn’t even want to know.

 _I think of rain, I think of roses blue_ , shrilled the distant radio.


End file.
